For many years, infra-red remote controls have been used to control home entertainment appliances such as televisions, DVD players, satellite/cable receivers, audio systems, and so on.
More recently, the ubiquitous use of smartphones has meant that there is considerable demand for controlling these entertainment appliances using a mobile app, rather than a special-purpose remote control. Apart from reducing the number of remote control devices required, control by a mobile app allows devices to be controlled from anywhere where the smartphone is in range of a WiFi® network, whereas infra-red remote controls generally require line-of-sight communication. Control of an appliance in a different room is particularly useful in the context of video distribution systems, where the signal from (for example) a single central DVD player or satellite decoder may be selectably sent to any one of multiple connected display screens. A user watching satellite television in one room may therefore wish to control a central satellite receiver which is in another part of the building.
Some entertainment appliances are now designed to be connected to a home TCP/IP network for control with a smartphone app. However, the provision of IR receivers on this type of appliance is still ubiquitous, and there is a need for a means of controlling an IR-controlled device connected to a video distribution system, via a smartphone app.
Some systems have been made available which use a TCP/IP connected device to transmit IR commands, in response to user controls in the form of a smartphone or tablet app. However, such systems often suffer from high latency, i.e. a time delay between the user selecting a function on the smartphone and the infra-red being transmitted to the entertainment appliance. This results in a poor user experience and considerable frustration. Also, existing systems are not highly integrated into video distribution systems. It is currently possible to control a video distribution system with a smartphone app to select which sources route to which display screens, and separately to control the sources and display screens with a smartphone app which sends IR commands to the sources and display screens, but these two functions use different devices and separate communication channels.
It is an object of the invention to provide low-latency app control of an appliance having an infra-red receiver.